(06-05-2013, 12:16 AM)Steph Wrote: Does anyone have a suggestion for a good tach to put on the 1300 and are there any tricks to installing it?

Thanks @jmck for the nudge. I have thought about it, but that's all I've done. Primarily I think that if you go hanging a tacho off the bike you're going to become preoccupied with the thing and panic a little if you see the revs rising - like when you miss a gear, which we have all done at some time. The 1300 runs out of puff after about 5,200 rpm so unless you've got a red hot cam in it, forget the tacho! If I was going to fit any gauge it would be oil temp. When I was racing I relied more on the oil temp gauge than anything else to alert me to trouble.

Any of the "mini tachs" they have out there will work. Many are designed aftermarket for cruisers so they are nice and chrome. They are also nice and expensive. You'll need an electronic version, not mechanical. There will be a wire on the tach that is setup to hook to the negative end of one of your coils. I don't know if the 1300 has two or one coil. Most come with instructions that are pretty straightforward if you can do basic electronic stuff.

(06-05-2013, 02:03 AM)Gibbo Wrote: Thanks Gibbo, I appreciate the advice. I use the tach for shift points. I like to stay in the sweet part of the power curve.

(06-05-2013, 12:16 AM)Steph Wrote: Does anyone have a suggestion for a good tach to put on the 1300 and are there any tricks to installing it?

Thanks @jmck for the nudge. I have thought about it, but that's all I've done. Primarily I think that if you go hanging a tacho off the bike you're going to become preoccupied with the thing and panic a little if you see the revs rising - like when you miss a gear, which we have all done at some time. The 1300 runs out of puff after about 5,200 rpm so unless you've got a red hot cam in it, forget the tacho! If I was going to fit any gauge it would be oil temp. When I was racing I relied more on the oil temp gauge than anything else to alert me to trouble.

Hope this helps.

Gibbo

(06-05-2013, 02:43 AM)moze229 Wrote: Any of the "mini tachs" they have out there will work. Many are designed aftermarket for cruisers so they are nice and chrome. They are also nice and expensive. You'll need an electronic version, not mechanical. There will be a wire on the tach that is setup to hook to the negative end of one of your coils. I don't know if the 1300 has two or one coil. Most come with instructions that are pretty straightforward if you can do basic electronic stuff.

Thanks for the info. It gives me a starting point. Now I'm going to talk to the geniuses at the Yamaha shop and see what they say...that's frequently interesting even if it's not informative. The shop in Daytona seems to be pretty good though.

(06-06-2013, 01:14 PM)Steph Wrote:

(06-05-2013, 02:03 AM)Gibbo Wrote: Thanks Gibbo, I appreciate the advice. I use the tach for shift points. I like to stay in the sweet part of the power curve.

(06-05-2013, 12:16 AM)Steph Wrote: Does anyone have a suggestion for a good tach to put on the 1300 and are there any tricks to installing it?

Thanks @jmck for the nudge. I have thought about it, but that's all I've done. Primarily I think that if you go hanging a tacho off the bike you're going to become preoccupied with the thing and panic a little if you see the revs rising - like when you miss a gear, which we have all done at some time. The 1300 runs out of puff after about 5,200 rpm so unless you've got a red hot cam in it, forget the tacho! If I was going to fit any gauge it would be oil temp. When I was racing I relied more on the oil temp gauge than anything else to alert me to trouble.

Hope this helps.

Gibbo

(06-05-2013, 02:43 AM)moze229 Wrote: Any of the "mini tachs" they have out there will work. Many are designed aftermarket for cruisers so they are nice and chrome. They are also nice and expensive. You'll need an electronic version, not mechanical. There will be a wire on the tach that is setup to hook to the negative end of one of your coils. I don't know if the 1300 has two or one coil. Most come with instructions that are pretty straightforward if you can do basic electronic stuff.

Thanks for the info. It gives me a starting point. Now I'm going to talk to the geniuses at the Yamaha shop and see what they say...that's frequently interesting even if it's not informative. The shop in Daytona seems to be pretty good though.

I figured two, but wasn't positive. When I installed my tach, I just kind of winged the whole thing because the tach manufacturer couldn't tell me if it was compatible with a single fire coil. Some are, and some are designed for dual fire. My 650 has two, single fire coils. So, almost any of the aftermarket chrome tachs will work. You'll just connect to the ground off one of the coils. Doesn't matter which one.

Since these are so expensive, I built my own tach. What I did is buy one of the cheaper mini tachs (the ones that aren't encased in a big chrome housing) and then bought my own chrome gauge pod. The tach was like $70.00 and the pod was like $10.00. The drawback is that I couldn't find a white faced mini tach that wasn't maxed at 12000 rpm. An ideal tach would be 0-8000 for these bikes.

Also, if you decide to do this, don't splice into the coil ground wire - its not needed. Instead, wire up a piggyback wire. Make a wire that plugs into the coil ground connection that has two ends. One end plug in the factory negative ground. On the other end plug in the tach wire. Now if you ever want to go back to stock, just unplug the piggy back and all of your factory wiring is still non-spliced.

(06-06-2013, 03:53 PM)moze229 Wrote: I figured two, but wasn't positive. When I installed my tach, I just kind of winged the whole thing because the tach manufacturer couldn't tell me if it was compatible with a single fire coil. Some are, and some are designed for dual fire. My 650 has two, single fire coils. So, almost any of the aftermarket chrome tachs will work. You'll just connect to the ground off one of the coils. Doesn't matter which one.

Since these are so expensive, I built my own tach. What I did is buy one of the cheaper mini tachs (the ones that aren't encased in a big chrome housing) and then bought my own chrome gauge pod. The tach was like $70.00 and the pod was like $10.00. The drawback is that I couldn't find a white faced mini tach that wasn't maxed at 12000 rpm. An ideal tach would be 0-8000 for these bikes.

Also, if you decide to do this, don't splice into the coil ground wire - its not needed. Instead, wire up a piggyback wire. Make a wire that plugs into the coil ground connection that has two ends. One end plug in the factory negative ground. On the other end plug in the tach wire. Now if you ever want to go back to stock, just unplug the piggy back and all of your factory wiring is still non-spliced.

Good ideas. Thanks a ton. Time to start looking around for parts and pieces.

I know this is an old thread but I came here looking for answers and ended up finding the info elsewhere so I thought I would post it.

The VStar 1300 has what is called a single-fire ignition. That means that only one coil (a single coil) fires on each compression stroke. If you connect many different brands of tachometer to either coil, the tach will read half of the actual RPM.

A double-fire or dual-fire ignition, like many of the older bikes that do not have an ECM (computer) fire both coils on each compression stroke. That means a tach connected to either coil on those bikes will read the true RPM.

Of course you would not want to connect the two coils together since it might destroy the ECM. So, what do you do?

You can buy tach adapters from several sources for about $30 to $100, or you could make your own for less than $5.
Here's how.

Unplug the negative coil wire on each coil (orange wire on one and red/grey on the other). Do not unplug the red/black wires. Plug one of those piggy back spade connectors onto the coil terminal where the wire you just unplugged was located. Plug the wire back onto one of the terminals on this piggy back. You might have to use a pair of heavy duty wire cutters to trim the terminal on the piggy back to accept the coil wire plug. Now the bike is still in a stock configuration but you have a point on each coil where you can make a connection without cutting any wires.

Time to make the tach adaptor. While at RS go ahead and buy two 1N4004, 1N4005, 1N4006, or 1N4007 or equivalent diodes. Also buy two 100K ohm resistors. 1/4 watt or 1/2 watt is OK.

Lay a diode and a resistor side by side on your table and twist the leads together. The diode and resistor are now in parallel. You can now either add a short length of wire to one end of each diode/resistor or you could solder a terminal (RS #64-3058, etc.) directly to the pair.

Last thing to do is to connect the tach wire to the other end of both diode/resistor pairs (usually the green wire).
The end of the diode with the silver band must be the end that is connected to the coils - not the tack lead.
This ensures the diode is connected properly - see the picture.

I put some heat shrink tubing over each diode/resistor pair before I soldered them to the tach wire. Then I put heat shrink over the whole mess.

You may want to buy a 4 or 5 pin waterproof connector to fit near the tacho before you wire it up so that you can unplug the tacho without removing the tank etc to disconnect it. They are cheap on ebay, I bought a whole kit of 2x1-6 pin connectors for $20.

You can easily make a bracket to hang the speedo off the side of the speedo using one of its bolts, i'll post a pic of mine when done.